182 



CITY OF LIMA. 



from childhood I had read with such admiration, I was tempted to think 

 myself in Timbuctoo itself. Mud houses of one low story, with large 

 doors and grated windows, exposing filth and poverty to view, inhabited 

 only by negroes and mulattoes, thronging in gaping and half-naked 

 crowds about the doors and corners, were alone in sight. 



14 By degrees, however, the appearance began to improve : the houses 

 became more neat and lofty, till something like civilization and comfort, 

 if not elegance, was to be seen. But even in the best streets through 

 which we passed every thing wore a decayed and shabby appearance, 

 while the covered verandas projecting from the second story, of clumsy 

 architecture and dark colours, threw an air of gloom over the streets." 



Much of the decayed and shabby appearance above alluded to is 

 attributable to the horrors of civil war ; for no city can be alternately 

 occupied by hostile armies without suffering in its appearance, as well 

 as in its moral and commercial health. But Lima is now gradually 

 improving in both, and may yet resume the splendid rank she for- 

 merly held. 



On the opposite side of the river, connected with the city by a bridge 

 of brown freestone, is the suburb of St. Lazaro, of considerable extent, 

 equalling the city itself in the regularity of its streets and the beauty 

 of its edifices. The bridge is necessarily very substantial and lofty, 

 as the River Rimac is at some seasons swollen to an immense torrent 

 by the melting of snow and ice on the Andes ; while in the winter the 

 stream is shallow and insignificant, sometimes " presenting only a mass 

 of dry gravel, intersected in two or three places by small rivulets, purl- 

 ing like so many brooks in their pebbly courses." The river here is 

 about one hundred yards in width. 



The grand square, or Plaza, as the inhabitants term it, in the middle 

 of the city, is about three hundred and eighty feet in extent on each 

 side ; and the centre of it is occupied by a handsome brass fountain, 

 which formerly must have been highly ornamental to it. Historians 

 describe it as being magnificent, " ornamented by a bronze statue of 

 Fame, from the trumpet of which, and the mouths of eight lions sur- 

 rounding it, the water is ejected." During the struggles of the revolution, 

 however, this fountain was suffered to become dilapidated and out of 

 repair, so that it had ceased to play when I visited the city in 1825. 

 Captain Delano describes it, in 1805, as "spouting the water ten or 

 twelve feet high, so as to fall into a square reservoir, from which it 

 continually runs through about twelve copper pipes into a basin of 

 sixteen or eighteen feet diameter, and has a conductor through which 

 the superfluous water runs off. The rim of this basin is just high enough 

 for the people to step over and fill their kegs, which vessels are the 

 most common in use for that purpose." 



The east side of the Plaza, or public square, is occupied by the 

 cathedral and archbishop's palace, both of which are large buildings, 

 partly constructed of stone. On the north side of the square is the 

 palace formerly the residence of the viceroy, but now of the republican 

 president : this building is said to have been erected by Pizarro, at the 

 founding of the city in 1536 ; and they show strangers one of the halls 

 of the apartment in which the tyrant was assassinated : another exten- 



